Oklahoma has set execution dates nine times for death row inmate Richard Glossip. The state has fed him three ‘last meals.’
Glossip, now 61, has even been married twice while awaiting execution. Somehow, he’s still here, even after the Supreme Court rejected his challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection process nine years ago.
Now, in another twist, Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general has joined with Glossip in seeking to overturn his murder conviction and death sentence in a 1997 murder-for-hire scheme.
He was again found guilty of first-degree murder in a 2004 retrial.
This unlikely turn has put Glossip’s case back at the Supreme Court, where the justices will hear arguments on Wednesday.
Oklahoma has set execution dates nine times for death row inmate Richard Glossip. The state has fed him three ‘last meals’. He is pictured here in February 2021
Glossip (right) was found guilty of arranging the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese (left), the owner of an Oklahoma City motel he was managing
The court´s review of Glossip’s case comes amid a decline in the use of the death penalty and a drop in new death sentences in recent years.
At the same time, though, the court’s conservative majority has generally been less open to efforts to halt executions.
It’s exceedingly rare for prosecutors to acknowledge they, or perhaps their predecessors, made serious mistakes that led to the imposition of death sentences.
But that’s precisely what Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond did, in calling for Glossip to get a new trial.
Glossip has always maintained his innocence in the 1997 killing in Oklahoma City of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme.
Another man, Justin Sneeed admitted robbing and killing Van Treese but testified he only did so after Glossip promised to pay him $10,000.
Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony and was the key witness against Glossip.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday with a decision expected by next June
Justin Sneed, a handyman, admitted robbing and beating Mr Van Treese to death in January 1997, but said he only did it after Glossip offered to pay him $10,000
Drummond has said he does not believe Glossip is innocent, but the attorney general contends he did not receive a fair trial.
Among Drummond´s concerns are that prosecutors knew Sneed lied on the witness stand about his psychiatric condition and his reason for taking the mood-stabilizing drug lithium.
Drummond also has cited a box of evidence in the case that was destroyed, including motel receipts, a shower curtain and masking tape that Glossip´s attorney, Don Knight, said could have potentially proven Glossip´s innocence.
‘The highest elected law enforcement officer in Oklahoma has said that Richard Glossip did not get a fair trial,’ said Knight, a veteran death penalty trial attorney who has consulted on hundreds of capital cases. ‘As far as I know that´s unprecedented.’
‘Public confidence in the death penalty requires the highest standard of reliability, so it is appropriate that the U.S. Supreme Court will review this case,’ Drummond said in a statement on Monday. ‘
As Oklahoma’s chief law officer, I will continue fighting to ensure justice is done in this case and every other.’
Glossip is asking the Supreme Court to grant him a new trial after an Oklahoma court refused to overturn his conviction despite potentially exculpatory evidence being recently uncovered. A decision is expected by the end of June 2025.
John Mills, an attorney for Glossip, said his client is innocent. ‘He has no criminal history, no history of misconduct during his entire time in prison, and has maintained his innocence throughout a quarter century wrongfully on death row. It is time – past time – for his nightmare to be over,’ Mills said in a statement.
The Supreme Court blocked the latest effort to execute Glossip in early May.
Glossip has been behind bars for 27 years since he was found guilty in his 1997 murder trial
Despite Drummond’s doubts about the trial, an Oklahoma appeals court upheld Glossip´s conviction, and the state’s pardon and parole board deadlocked in a vote to grant him clemency.
But Drummond also has said he does not believe Glossip is innocent of the murder-for-hire killing of his former boss, Barry Van Treese, in 1997.
Another man, Justin Sneed, admitted robbing and killing Van Treese after Glossip promised to pay him $10,000.
The victim’s family, represented by former federal judge Paul Cassell, filed a brief with the Supreme Court saying, ‘The truth here is that no evidence was suppressed and Glossip commissioned the murder of Barry Van Treese.’
Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony and was the key witness against Glossip.
Two separate independent investigations have revealed problems with the prosecution’s case.
Drummond said that Sneed lied on the witness stand about his psychiatric condition and his reason for taking the mood-stabilizing drug lithium and that prosecutors knew Sneed was lying.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has called for Glossip to get a new trial
Oklahoma has set execution dates nine times for Glossip. Pictured the gurney in the the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma
Also, evidence was destroyed, Drummond said.
‘If he is executed, I believe that it will be a travesty of justice,’ Drummond said in an interview.
‘The state’s witness was the murderer, and he was endorsed for the death penalty until he turned state’s evidence and said, ‘Oh, not me, but Mr. Glossip – he’s the mastermind,” Drummond said. ‘That struck me as very odd.’
Drummond commissioned an independent investigation and disclosed information – including a prosecutor’s hand-written notes from a meeting with Sneed – that had been withheld from Glossip’s lawyers.
The new information cast doubt on Sneed’s credibility, Glossip’s lawyers said.
‘If that means I’m never elected again, then I can go to my grave being satisfied that I did the right thing,’ Drummond said.
Pictured: Victim Barry Van Treese with wife Donna and their children. Richard Glossip and Justin Sneed were convicted of killing Glossip’s boss and owner of the Best Budget Inn
Drummond believes Glossip’s role in covering up Van Treese’s murder makes him at least an ‘accessory after the fact,’ justifying a long prison sentence. But Glossip’s murder conviction was too flawed for Drummond to defend.
‘Oklahomans deserve to have absolute faith that the death penalty is administered fairly and with certainty,’ Drummond said.
‘I feel strongly that my position is correct,’ Drummond added. ‘But if a majority on the Supreme Court says otherwise, I will be in the death chamber with Mr. Glossip.’
Some Republican state lawmakers who support the death penalty have joined the growing chorus of Glossip supporters who are seeking to overturn his conviction.
Glossip´s case provides a vivid illustration of the seemingly endless legal twists and turns that can accompany death penalty cases. In 2015, he was being held in a cell next to Oklahoma’s execution chamber, waiting to be strapped to a gurney and injected with drugs that would kill him.
But the scheduled time for his execution came and went, and behind the walls of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, prison officials were scrambling after learning one of the lethal drugs they received to carry out the procedure didn’t match the execution protocols.
In 2022, Glossip married his second wife in prison, 32-year-old Lea Rodger, in Oklahoma State Penitentiary
Lea Rodger, 32, poses for a photo the day before she married Oklahoma death row-inmate Richard Glossip, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Glossip has tied the knot in prison for the second time
‘That’s just crazy,’ Glossip, now 61, said at the time after learning of the drug mix-up, which ultimately led to a nearly seven-year moratorium on executions in Oklahoma.
The case also has been trying for members of the Van Treese family, the relatives of the victim who was beaten to death with a baseball bat in a room of the motel he owned. Their attorney wrote in a brief to the high court that they want to see Glossip’s conviction and sentence upheld.
‘In this case, the Van Treese family has waited patiently for justice for 10,047 days,’ lawyer Paul Cassell, a former federal judge, wrote on behalf of the family. ‘And yet, they are now witnessing the spectacle of their case being stalled by the Attorney General for their home state confessing an error where none exists.’
Glossip’s case has been to the Supreme Court before. He was given a reprieve in 2015, although the court later ruled 5-4 against him in a case involving the drugs used in lethal executions.
Glossip has been just hours away from being executed three times. His last scheduled execution, in September 2015, was halted just moments before he was to be led to the death chamber when prison officials realized they had received the wrong lethal drug.
That mix-up helped prompt a nearly seven-year moratorium on the death penalty in Oklahoma.
Glossip’s case attracted international attention after actor Susan Sarandon – who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean in the 1995 movie Dead Man Walking – took up his cause in real life.
In May 2023, Kim Kardashian tweeted in support of Glossip, arguing his innocence
Actress and activist Susan Sarandon and Don Knight, Richard Glossip’s Defense Attorney speak onstage during the ‘Killing Richard Glossip’ panel following a film in 2017
Kim Van Atta, left, and Helen Prejean celebrate after a stay of execution was issued in 2015
Anti-death penalty activists, including members of MoveOn.org and other advocacy groups rally outside the Supreme Court in 2015 in Washington, DC
Prejean herself has served as Glossip’s spiritual adviser and frequently visited him in prison.
His case also was featured in the 2017 documentary film ‘Killing Richard Glossip.’
It’s exceedingly rare for a prosecutor to argue against executing a death row inmate.
In a similar situation to Glossip’s a year ago, the justices ordered a Texas appeals court to look again at the case of a death row inmate who also had the backing of prosecutors.
The inmate, Areli Escobar, had been convicted and sentenced to death based on forensic evidence that a judge later found to be flawed.
But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the judge’s order for a new trial, even though the newly elected prosecutor in Travis County, Texas, was no longer standing behind the conviction.
When Escobar appealed to the Supreme Court, the prosecutor supported his bid. Escobar was not facing imminent execution.
The Supreme Court will hear Glossip’s case with only eight justices.
Justice Neil Gorsuch is not taking part, presumably because he was involved at an earlier stage of the case when he was an appeals court judge.
The high court had been weighing Glossip’s appeal since late September. The reason for the delay in acting on it is unclear.